It wouldn’t be the first time that a high price tag torpedoed a government takeover of health care. In 2014, Vermont’s attempt at single-payer ended abruptly when Gov. Peter Shumlin rejected the 11.5% payroll tax hike and 9.5% individual tax hike required to fund the program. Yet the financial costs of single-payer are practically negligible compared with the human costs.
Consider the Department of Veterans Affairs’ scandal-plagued single-payer health program. Last month, the agency’s inspector general found that more than 100 veterans died while waiting for care at a Los Angeles VA facility between October 2014 and August 2015. Hospitals in the United Kingdom’s single-payer system, the National Health Service, are so overcrowded that the British Red Cross earlier this year labeled the situation a “humanitarian crisis.” In my native Canada, patients face a median wait time of 20 weeks from seeing a primary-care doctor to getting treatment from a specialist, according to a November 2016 report from the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank. These delays have more than doubled since 1993. Is it any wonder that around 45,000 Canadians left the country in 2015 to seek medical treatment? Instead of avoiding Canada’s example, supporters of the Healthy California Act want to emulate it. In March, three Democratic state senators—including Mr. Lara—toured Canada to solicit advice from health officials.
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